A Behind the Scenes Look at the Newest Studio Artists of The Creatives Project

The Creatives Project (TCP) is the heart of Atlanta’s art scene. With the muscle of education, community, and commerce programs, TCP pumps artists of all mediums through the arteries of The Goat Farm Arts Center and studios in Southwest Atlanta. The goal of this work is to create a happy, healthy city by giving voices to those who have none while inspiring emerging artists and underserved communities to leave a lasting impact on Atlanta.

TCP’s Artist in Studio program strengthens our city’s artists with studio space and allows them to breathe financially. This competitive program provides hand-selected visual artists with free studio spaces and exhibition opportunities for 2 years. While in the program, residents will also receive promotional support, exhibition opportunities, and professional development. In exchange for such a great gig, the artists organize their own art outreach.

We’ll be waiting with baited breath to see the work this cohort creates during their time in TCP’s Artist in Studio program. As a preview, we were able to peep into the insight of the artists’ genius. Take a look; it’s running through their veins.

The issues addressed through my work are those surrounded by stigmas, such as domestic violence, homelessness, sexual assault, mental health, and incarceration. Stigma prevents many from talking openly about these topics, which increases misconceptions and “othering”: the idea that these things exist only for certain kinds of people in certain kinds of ways. Through conversation, experience, and interaction I can reduce stigmas and destroy the idea of the “other” when it comes to our understanding of these issues and who they affect. My practice strives to create spaces for conversation, opportunities for education and awareness, and actions for change around these subjects. I seek to make these hard topics more accessible, while still honest, and without sensationalization. Doing so creates space for action and change.

It is my belief that knowledge about our space gives us the power to claim our spaces. So often, we must live in places that never quite feel like home but learning, naming, and finding beauty in every corner of our neighborhoods gives us license to change that. Knowing the plants around us, when they flower, how they flower, what will replace them as the seasons change, connects us to our surroundings in such a way that makes them ours, that makes even the most mundane sidewalk a point of pride. Furthermore, learning how to take knowledge and translate it into creative works provides a therapeutic skill that can be utilized over a lifetime.

Utilizing photography, video, performance, and installation, I aim to examine the interdependence of history and mythos as they both pertain to place. Within many of the artistic projects I pursue, I borrow from narrative cinematic language as I perform and construct my own reality for the camera. By inserting myself into the landscape, I aim to reconfigure my complex relationship with the American South. The actions I choose to undertake within many of these performances are often rooted in failure, futility, and chance. By embracing a notion such as failure, I aim to illuminate a more playful and optimistic perspective of the challenges and futility found in our current era.

Personal narratives, memory, and imagination can be both personal and political. I left my country as an adult after a tumultuous childhood and coming of age. I was born in a dysfunctional Jewish family in the middle of a seven-year murderous dictatorship in Argentina…Like Julio Cortázar, James Joyce, and Jean Rhys I’m uprooted and compelled to remember, reimagine, and recreate both my past and my place. I do so through different strategies such as satire and humor, invention and storytelling.

…When constructing my images, I give them a feminist angle and tell the stories in a straight-on, illustrative manner. Spontaneity and rhythm are present and the final aim is to communicate a mindset in the vein of artists like Paula Rego and Kara Walker. The narratives often come from my own experiences back in Buenos Aires, Argentina, but I also depict stories that I have heard, read, or invented.

Seeing families playing and thinking together inside the High Museum’s Art Lab show me that my work can be fun and still convey a deeper message. I began seeing new possibilities for it’s ability to communicate with people. A language or a code need a receiver, a player… My goals are to contribute to a studio space where ideas can form around supporting minority and challenged communities, to merge art into social atmosphere, a space where people can be drawn together to play and communicate and to collaborate with fellow artist to influence our executions.

As an immigrant that has dived in different cultures, my artwork relates to the essence of who we are, where we have come from, and where we are journeying. This approach is a powerful facilitator of culture, identity, and growth. It will help bringing people together across boundaries, increasing understandings across disparate and historically unequal groups, and supporting the underrepresented communities to create, maintain and share their own stories.

It is my goal to touch as many people as I can through my work, and to give underrepresented, marginalized people of color, a voice and a vision of hope, advancement, and transcendence. My priorities are to create meaningful work that inspires and uplifts, as well as to create powerful work which serves a visual catalyst for change. I hope to provide a moment of refuge and peace, enlightenment and philosophical reflections upon nature, coexistence, life, and humanity.

The one undeniable truth that I base my work in is that we all have souls, and we are all connected on a spiritual level. I strive to interrogate, explore, and encourage sense-making about how the process of creating more equitable circumstances for all. What I ultimately aim to create are the conversations surrounding social justice and Black experiences in America that begin to percolate among individuals after they have experienced my work.

Interested in learning more about The Creatives Project? Check out our other feature on TCP’s ART-FORCE Housing. If you’d like to join a cocktail hour with local artists, don’t miss TCP’s Mix & Mingle event, happening December 1st and 2nd.

Headline image is property of The Creatives Project. All other photos are property of the respective artist.